


Well you know that Death's a Gambler (Or So the Stories Say)

by NoHolds



Series: Shadows in the River Fog [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Low Chaos, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Low Chaos Daud, Nightmares, Shadows in the river fog, Whalers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 18:32:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4575231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoHolds/pseuds/NoHolds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daud's seen and done horrible, horrible things, in his time, but maybe the worst was the ruin he made of Corvo Attano's life, and the broken men they both turned out to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Today might be your lucky day

You see it every night.

His face as they hauled him away. The way his dark eyes flashed when you’d killed the empress, that strangled sound he’d made when you’d slung Emily over your shoulder, never to be seen again.

He’d killed so many of your whalers that day, the famous Corvo Attano, eyes sharp, blade willing, proving all the stories true. But you’d had reinforcements, and even the best swordsman tires.

The weight of their numbers had forced him to his knees, pinned his arms, broke his fingers, flung his sword to sink into the river silt.

So he’d been forced to watch, helpless, as you’d stripped him of his life and his honor, and left him to a monster’s mercy.

And now every night you see that helpless, hollow look in his face, his desperate eyes staring straight into yours as the Spymaster dragged him away, the empty stare of a dead man walking.

 

* * *

 

 When he breaks out of Coldridge not even a year later, you dreams change for the darker.

Each night, he stalks you, the Empress’s shadow, the disgraced Lord Protector, a man with a debt to settle and nothing to lose.

You’ve never had a very good imagination, but your dreams find new ways for him to kill you each night.

Delicate fingers on your windpipe. A sword through your spine. A shadow in the rafters, a bolt through the heart.

But no matter how he kills you, the dreams end the same. With a metal mask and the flat, black eyes of a man who's got nothing to lose.

 

* * *

 

You are so _sure_ he is coming to kill you.

Know with a steady certainty that it will end with him dead, or with you dead. That it won’t be over until one of you is rotting in the river.

Felt with every disappeared noblewoman, every vanished lord, your fate crawling closer.

A fate with crow’s eyes and death’s scales, just waiting to tip the balance

 

* * *

 

 Except-

Except that he washes up from the river looking like a drowned rat, half-dead from poison and exposure, not even strong enough to walk.

When you go to see him, this man who you’ve imagined perched on every rooftop, watching from every shadow, he is smaller than you expected.

Narrow shoulders, delicate features, probably a head shorter than you. Built like a Magpie, then, or a falcon, something quick and clever.

You look at him, stripped of his weapons and drifting out of consciousness, and you can’t help but think of a trick the crows in the fishing yard used to play, feigning a broken wing to lure predators out of safety.

That night, your nightmares are of winged shadows, swift justice, a death you’d never hear coming.

He must dream, too, because there are always words on his lips as he sleeps, whispered too soft to hear, names carried away by the river fog.

 

* * *

 

 You think for the longest time that it is a trap. That somehow he drank all that poison on purpose, that he is, despite appearances, healthy and waiting for the time to strike.

As the days roll by, you realize that he truly is dying, and the anti-climax of it very nearly does you in.

You had pictured a battle, a condemnation, that death’s mask of his spitting all of your sins into your face as you died.

Instead, he is handed to you on a silver platter, near-drowned, paralyzed by poison.

 

* * *

 

 You find that you haven’t the heart to kill him.

Him pacing his cage like a zoo animal, and looking just as wild. You look at him and you do not see your death.

You see wings clipped, hands tied, you see a broken man with nothing left to live for.

In your dreams, he is the lord protector, neat hair and immaculately pressed robes, watching you take Emily with ragged, wild eyes.

In reality, only his eyes are the same. Black, feral eyes, half-mad and just as lost and helpless as the day you killed the empress.

But now, his clothes are torn, and his cheeks are hollow, and there are dark, bruisy shadows under his eyes. His hair is loose and ragged as the rest of him, matted with river mud. There are weeping sores on his knuckles, the ill-healing aftermath of a fight.

You think, for the first time in nearly a year, that this doesn’t have to end in death.

You have taken every single other thing from this man. You needn’t take his life, as well.

So, you tell your whalers to put him in a cell, instead, and think it mercy, but when Corvo overhears his eyes flash wide and fearful, and his mark flickers fast and frantic, like the hammering of a nervous heart.

But there is nothing else to do, save to kill him, and you have had your fill of death, so you have your whalers haul him off anyway.

Weak as Corvo still is, he poses no real threat to your men, but he gathers himself like a hunting cat when they open the door to his cage, and he pounces on one of them with a snarl and a shaking hand.

You watch him ducking punches and aiming kicks, his breath loud and frantic in the low space, and your heart goes into your throat, thinking maybe you were right the first time, maybe he is here to kill you, but there’s stagger in his steps and tremble in his hands, and he manages to put two of your men on the ground before he’s restrained, but it’s only two men, and they’re barely even bleeding.

You look at him, on his knees with his arms pinned, and remember him in the same position on the day you ruined his life.

Corvo’s breathing hard, shaking, naked fear in his eyes, and he’s looking at you like a doomed man on trial, begging to be spared the block.

You wonder, at that. At what he must think awaits him in your prison cells, at the monster he must imagine you to be (maybe the same monster you imagined in him).

It is only as your Whalers haul him away that you see the scars on his wrists, the gruesome aftermath of too-tight manacles, of straining to get free, that you remember Corvo’s stint in Coldridge, and the cruel men in the spymaster’s employ.

It seems you are not the only one haunted by the past.

 


	2. So Roll the Dice, boy. Roll the dice.

He gets out. He gets out and you curse yourself for going soft, because he is going to kill you, and you aren’t ready to die.

You’re a worn-down old sinner, sure, and maybe you even deserve what’s coming for you, but aren’t ready to die. Not just yet.

* * *

 

Over the next few days, you hear strange reports.

Footsteps from the shadows, Whalers waking up in strange places with bad headaches.

Old, rusted-out machinery in the abandoned whaling yard rumbling to life, the bitter stench of burning oil filling the air for the first time in years.

Corvo's gear goes missing from where you'd hidden it away, his knife and his bolts and his bow, and you know with a cool sort of clarity that you're next.

* * *

 

When he comes for you, it is so much worse than you imagined.

Corvo comes for you like the Grim Reaper himself. All smoke and shadow, you never even see him coming, but every time you turn your back another one of your men goes missing.

No blood, no sound, no body, you just blink and your whalers vanish from all around you.

(You find them later, unconscious but unhurt, hidden away in dumpsters and doorways, not a hair out of place).

Things start moving around your room of their own accord, and at first you thought you were going crazy, but now you know.

He’s toying with you.

You’re sure of it. Like a cat toys with a mouse, he is surely poised somewhere in the shadows, watching with cold, laughing eyes as your sanity pulls apart at the seams.

You think, as soon as he tires of his game you’ll get a bolt in the heart, and you’ll never even get to look him in the eyes as you die.

Even still, you refuse to come unglued. You do not start ranting, shouting at shadows. You say once, firmly as you can manage (and you can hear the tremble in your voice but it’ll have to do),

“I know you’re there, Corvo.”

He does not laugh. He does not drop from the shadows. Your voice just hangs in the empty space, flat and dead in the quiet, the only sound other than your foolish, doomed heartbeat.

You turn from your last remaining guard, for just a moment, to scan the shadows for a flash of metal or a flutter of robes, and when you turn back there is only a wisp of blue smoke and the lingering smell of river air. No trace of the man. Not a scuffle, or a shout, or a bloodstain.

You are all alone, then, all alone in your office with Death watching you from the shadows, and you want to cry, and you want your heart to just give out so you don’t have to sit here with it lodged in your throat, but you didn’t get this old to give up now.

“Just show yourself. Make it a fair fight, at least.”

_Like it was a fair fight when you killed the Empress?_

Your voice sounds so small in the empty room, a child's voice. You try to sit down, but your chair's been moved away from where it was moments ago, and you land hard on the ground with a curse that rings hollow in the dead air.

It could be your imagination, but you think you hear a teasing laugh, carried away on the evening wind.

You shove to your feet and pace the room, heart beating too fast to stand still, and when you come back to your desk your key is gone, and there is a crossbow bolt trembling in the back of the chair, where your heart would be if you were sitting down.

A message, you think.

You look up to the rafters and see nothing but shadows.

You squint harder, think for a moment that you see a flicker of blue smoke, a flash of dark eyes, but when you blink it’s just dust catching the faded sunlight.

You imagine the rattle of dice, the tick-tick-tick of a roulette wheel spinning to a stop.

You’d been at the mercy of death himself, and he’d played his game, and he’d let you go.

* * *

 

For the rest of your life, you swear you aren’t a gambler.

No man gets so lucky twice.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna wait a day to post this, but I felt a bit silly about that, seeing as it's already done, and it's so short anyway. So here's the second half! Let me know if you enjoy!
> 
> I'm thinking the next work in the series is gonna be about Emily.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway, got this picture in my head of Corvo as Death in all those old stories about death playing games with you with your soul as the prize. 
> 
> And I've always liked the 'don't touch a hair on Daud's head' option in that mission, because what a fucked-up game to play, sweeping through a man's office like a ghost and stealing the keys right off his desk without him seeing you. 
> 
> I love Corvo, and my Corvo's a low-chaos sort of guy, but I imagine it's hard not to be scared of him just the same, this man with a grim reaper's mask and the power to do whatever he likes.


End file.
